Why your Children Should Have A Pet

 

Pets can Enhance the Quality of Life in Many Ways

By Dore Frances, IEC Coeur d’Alene

Coeur d’Alene Press Letters to the Editor

January 14, 2004

Pets can teach valuable lessons to children. Animals inside classrooms can help a child gain emotional independence.

Pets can also help build a child’s self-esteem. Pets can teach adults lessons as well. The same elements apply to both raising a child and a pet. They are very similar. If you have an out-of-control pet, you will probably have an out-of-control child.

Pets were used in therapy to help students who were at Columbine High School. We feel safe with pets. A pet will not harm you. They give us a sense of trust.

Animals are also used in therapy sessions at facilities for children of abuse and neglect. A study done in 1980 shows heart attack sufferers who owned pets had four times better chance of surviving a year.

Pets can play a major role in our lives whether it is to help with loneliness or to help cancer and heart attack patients through recovery therapy.

Pets ask so little of us – just a little tender, loving care. In return, we get so much from them.

I am a Child’s Right Advocate, Educational Consultant and Family Mentor. I can provide many personal stories about children I have worked with over the years who have had pets used to help them in counseling.